[learnstats2]

Yes, I agree with you, Excel formulas are absolutely programming. And yes, I agree, these are skills that can be taught.

But not that many people write Excel formulas. Up to 50% of people in the West don't have basic numeracy skills enough to do what you describe.

[kazinator]

I would say that you're beginning to program when you write something that iterates or recurses. With a clear terminating condition: not merely spreadsheet formulas that contain a cyclic reference whereby you iterate until some numbers appear to stabilize.

In my mind, the recognition of repeated structures in a spreadsheet count as beginning of programming. This sort of thing: "if I create this pattern of cell references and then repeat it across the grid arbitrarily far, such and such a result/behavior will emerge". It is like recursion unfolded, and on the verge of being codified compactly.

[benedikt]

Not only that, but Excel is the worlds most popular functional programming language.